Storied Lines(prev untitled) edit

[brynmawr1]

Hi Bryn-
Without changing a word, all I have is subtraction, and an arrangement in 4 quasi-couplets:

Black lines scar white
concrete, in angles.

Evidence
of lives intersected.

Squealing tires
felt in the gut.

Was the violence only of words?
Lines on the road keep secrets.

Hi Mark,

You've found my bones and left little meat!  I am going to try to rebuild a leaner poem on your scaffold.  Thank you for you insight!
bryn

---

Black, crisscross lines scar the white concrete,      Is this about concrete (as in a parking lot) or a road (as mentioned in last stanza) which would be asphalt and not white?
arranged in unnatural angles of violence.       Cant' those cracks also (more often) result from weathering and time?  From the thousands of everyday crossings?
Geometric evidence of lives intersected.   
 
Squealing tires echoing in the ether,
not heard by the living, still felt in the gut.
Was metal, bone rent and broken;
lives shattered with the windshield,
a mosaic of infinite shimmering shards,
suspended in stopped time, an inflection,
never to be the same?                                this is too cliche for the end of such a powerful stanza
 
Or was the violence only of words?
Curses made at each other and the universe,        "unknown others and the unknowable universe" (putting words in your mouth....sorry...just a thought)
the anger of inconvenience.                                referring to the unknown people involved in the cause of the skid marks cursing each other and fate.
Plans made the only thing broken.
 
Black crisscrossed lines on the road
keep their secrets,
leaving us to wonder.

I don't have a title for this one yet.

While what you've written here is very vivid, and connects nicely back to the opening stanza, I wanted a stanza about how time and ordinary traffic would create these which could then lead into you pondering on the cracks that occured in wrecks and road rage. Or lead into such a stanza at the end, wouldn't change the ending. Maybe I'm being too pedestrian (no pun intended) but when I look at a weathered, worn down road, unless there are skid marks, broken glass, etc. I would not think first of mayhem. 

Barring that, you might mention skid marks and glass along with the cracks in the opening and my stumble would be solved. One idea I was thinking of bringing in is the sterility of the scene after everything is cleaned up, the quiet after the violence, a sense of the juxtaposition.

I'd end it with "keep their secrets", at least as it stands now.  No one seems to like my wonder verse.  I just like the sound of it.

TqB

Though you didn't ask, "Fracture" might be a good title

Hi TqB,

A little background.  I got the idea as I was driving home and saw a bunch of crisscrossed skid marks on the road, as I have many times.  I have always wondered what the story behind these marks might be.  So not cracks.  This time I figured I would write a little poem about it.  The road was a freeway that happened to be concrete.  The second stanza comes from my own experience when I hit another car at an intersection.  I have a vivid memory of all the windows of the car exploding and how the glass seemed to hover in the air in that moment when time slows to nothing like the instantaneous moment when a pendulum reverses course, hence the reference to an inflection.  To whittle and hone, a fool's errand, it is all we have!
Thanks TqB